News & Events

Time to Get Ready: The Ticks Will Soon Come MARCHing In

When the temperature hits 4°C, ticks will start questing and feeding, and pets will once again be targets, so right now is the perfect time to get ready for National Tick Awareness Month (NTAM).

Two years ago, the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association (CVMA), in partnership with Merck Animal Health, launched National Tick Awareness Month, an initiative to help veterinarians educate pet owners about the risk of ticks and empower them to take tick-control measures. The response from the Canadian veterinary community has been remarkable — together, we have made great strides in raising pet owner awareness about ticks and how they can protect themselves and their pets.

2017 NTAM Campaign a Widespread Success

In response to requests from the veterinary community, the 2017 NTAM featured a sharable social media campaign to reach pet owners with a satirical video and poster, with the objective of getting them talking about ticks. Thanks to your active engagement, the campaign achieved results that exceeded our wildest expectations!

“I’m delighted by last year’s results. They show that the tools that are being created to support the campaign are meeting a need, and show that we’re successfully raising awareness about ticks in Canada,” says Dr. Troye McPherson, CVMA president. “When we started this campaign 2 years ago, I think many of us considered ticks to be a limited threat in Canada, but now we can see they are here and that they carry potential medical risks for humans and pets. As a result, pet owners are talking to their veterinarians and learning how to protect their pets and their families, and that’s really what National Tick Awareness Month is all about.”

Let’s keep up the momentum and the conversation

This year, the CVMA will once again provide you with unique, exciting community engagement tools to help you and your clients stay ahead of the tick invasion in Canada. Discover the campaign and get all the details in next month’s issue of The Canadian Veterinary Journal. In the meantime, be sure to mark your calendars: NTAM will kick off with a webinar on March 1, 2018!